Cascading Style Sheets, fondly referred to as CSS, is a simple design language intended to simplify the

process of making web pages presentable. CSS handles the look and feel part of a web page. Using CSS,
you can control the color of the text, the style of fonts, the spacing between paragraphs, how columns
are sized and laid out, what background images or colors are used, as well as a variety of other effects.

CSS is easy to learn and understand but it provides a powerful control over the presentation of an

HTML document. Most commonly, CSS is combined with the markup languages HTML or XHTML.

Advantages of CSS

 CSS saves time - You can write CSS once and then reuse the same sheet in multiple HTML
pages. You can define a style for each HTML element and apply it to as many web pages as you
want.
 Pages load faster - If you are using CSS, you do not need to write HTML tag attributes
every time. Just write one CSS rule of a tag and apply it to all the occurrences of that tag.
Soless code means faster download times.
 Easy maintenance - To make a global change, simply change the style, and all the elements in all
the web pages will be updated automatically.
 Superior styles to HTML - CSS has a much wider array of attributes than HTML, so you can give
a far better look to your HTML page in comparison to HTML attributes.
 Multiple Device Compatibility - Style sheets allow content to be optimized for more than one
type of device. By using the same HTML document, different versions of a website can be
presented for handheld devices such as PDAs and cell phones or for printing.

 Global web standards - Now HTML attributes are being deprecated and it is being
recommended to use CSS. So it’s a good idea to start using CSS in all the HTML pages to make
them compatible with future browsers.

CSS Syntax

A CSS rule-set consists of a selector and a declaration block:

The selector points to the HTML element you want to style.

The declaration block contains one or more declarations separated by semicolons.

Each declaration includes a CSS property name and a value, separated by a colon.

A CSS declaration always ends with a semicolon, and declaration blocks are surrounded by curly braces.

CSS Selectors
CSS selectors are used to "find" (or select) HTML elements based on their element name, id, class,
attribute, and more.

TYPE OF SELECTORS

The element Selector

The element selector selects elements based on the element name.

The id Selector

The id selector uses the id attribute of an HTML element to select a specific element.

The id of an element should be unique within a page, so the id selector is used to select one unique
element!

To select an element with a specific id, write a hash (#) character, followed by the id of the element.

The class Selector

The class selector selects elements with a specific class attribute.

To select elements with a specific class, write a period (.) character, followed by the name of the class.

Three Types of CSS

CSS comes in three types:

1. In a separate file (external)

2. At the top of a web page document (internal)
3. Right next to the text it decorates (inline).